Page 6 of Cold as Stone
“Hey, sweetheart,” the woman says, noticing me. Her smile is warm, genuine. “You okay? That bruise looks nasty.”
I nod, suddenly aware of how I must look in Lee’s oversized clothes, my hair probably sticking up at odd angles. “Fine,” I mutter, glancing away. “Just tired.”
She makes a noise of sympathy. “Get some rest, okay?”
Lee’s eyes never leave mine. “Night, Kya.”
Then he steps into his room, and the door clicks shut behind him, leaving me alone in the hallway with the memory of his bloody knuckles.
I slip back into Emma’s bed and pull the covers over my head, pressing my face into the pillow. I should feel satisfied. After all, I’m safe. And I do, mostly.
But there’s something else, too—a hollow ache in my chest that I’m afraid to name. I fall asleep thinking about green eyes and bruised hands.
I dream of motorcycles and leather cuts, of strong arms and bloody knuckles. I dream of a man who would burn the world down just to keep me safe.
And when I wake, I know what I have to do.
1
KYA
Ten years later
“You know, by my late-twenties, I assumed I’d have my shit together,” I mutter, squinting at the trailer I once prayed to escape. “Not be jumping back into this toxic waste dump of a mess.”
Instead, I’m standing ankle-deep in patchy gravel, dressed in funeral black, staring at the ghosts of my childhood. The March air cuts through my thick designer coat—the one and only designer thing I owned. I’d bought it to prove I’d made it out.
Fat lot of good it’s doing me now.
The place hasn’t changed. The trailer still leans to the left like it’s nursing a perpetual hangover, and still smells like stale smoke and regret, even from out here. The wind whistles through the busted screen door, and I swear I can hear Mom’s voice, scratchy from too many cigarettes and not enough apologies.
Well, look who finally came home.
The irony isn’t lost on me. All those years I spent running from this place, building a life that was the exact opposite of everything it represented. Clean lines, neutral colors, a carefully curated existence where everything had its place and nothing reminded me of where I came from. And here I am, right back where I started.
Only now it’s mine whether I want it or not.
My mother—Patricia “Patty” Sullivan, serial heartbreaker and occasional karaoke queen—died in a car crash last Tuesday. I got the call from some bored state trooper who couldn’t even pronounce my name right, stumbling over the syllables like they were broken glass in his mouth.
“Kee-ah Sullivan?”
“Ky-ah,” I’d corrected.
“Kikah?”
“Ky-ah.”
“Right, well, I’m sorry to inform you, Ms. Sullivan, your mother has died.”
Sadly, it wasn’t grief or shock that hit me—it was a hollow recognition that I’d been preparing for this call for years. Mom had been slowly killing herself with alcohol and bad choices since before I could remember. Part of me was surprised it had taken this long. Hearing the news felt a little like hearing the final bell of a fight that had been over long before the referee counted to ten.
The rest of his words became a blur after that until he’d told me something that had brought reality crashing back into focus.
“She had just cashed a check,” he’d added casually, like it was an afterthought. “From the state lottery. A million.”
I’d laughed. Like, full-body, are-you-kidding-me hysterical laughter that probably made the poor guy think grief had cracked me completely. Of course she won the lottery. Of course she died before spending a cent. And of course she left it all to me.
Even dead, Mom was still capable of turning my life upside down. At least this time it was in a way that might help.
